Exhibit Presentation
Your overall exhibit presentation plays a critical role in your exhibiting success. It must be visually stimulating, attracting the attention of the target audience. Once this occurs it is imperative to encourage people to stop at the booth, shop around and spend time and ultimately remember your exhibit in a positive way. In retail vernacular this is known as Stop, Shop and Remember. This is no easy feat. Statistics show that attendees visit 20 plus exhibits stopping for an average of 5-10 minutes depending on booth size and level of participation. By the time they leave the show floor memory of the exhibits quickly fade. Very few exhibitors are successful at producing any long term memorability. But it can be done with the right strategies and consistent execution.
Below are ideas to integrate into your exhibit presentation, what to focus on and what to avoid. This includes how to effectively communicate who you are, what you do and most important, what you can do for the target audience. The presentation must reinforce the corporate brand and major message consistently to ensure enhanced retention for the communications in the booth. Memorability can be further enhanced by planning activities that prolong the stay, encourage interaction with a staffer and ask attendees to see and do something while they are in the exhibit. To ensure this occurs, your booth whether it is big or small has to have an agenda and props in the booth to make it comfortable to stay and learn more. Finally you have to meet the information needs of the audience not only in the booth but post show so it’s important to capture information about the audience in your booth to facilitate fast and accurate follow-up post show.
The E3 survey and feedback evaluates the following criteria to see how effectively you are accomplishing your company’s objectives while addressing attendee needs. Ideas for how to use the results are listed below.
a. Does the overall exhibit grab attention? Your exhibit is like a billboard on a freeway. The attendee is driving down the aisle at 65 miles per hour. The first thing your exhibit must do is attract the attendee’s attention. The competition for their attention on the exhibit floor is intense. Step outside and look at your exhibit through the eyes of an attendee in the aisle. Examine how you are using exhibit architectural properties, materials, shapes, size and scale, color, lighting, graphic images, text copy, motion, media tools and product displays to help stimulate audience interest. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospect. Ask yourself, what about our exhibit would stimulate audience interest. If you can’t come up with the answer it’s time to rethink booth attractions and high level communications.
b. Is it quickly/easily discernable what the company does/offers? Interest in viewing specific products/services is one of the primary reason attendees visit the exhibit hall. An attendee will not invest much time trying to figure out what you do or offer. Not when there are hundreds of other exhibitors offering similar solutions and doing a better job telling their story. Prominent placement of products/services so they are visible from many perspectives and several aisles and supporting these with attractive displays and graphics can be compelling to your target audience. When these are supported by the right narratives, images and multi-media displays you’ll attract more target prospects and encourage them to want to learn more about your company in the exhibit and post show.
c. Is it quickly/easily discernible who the company is? Just because an exhibit captures attention and communicates what you offer, it doesn’t ensure the visitor knows the name of the company or is exposed to the brand. This makes it critical to apply your brand including company name, colors, logos, symbols and taglines consistently at all critical sight levels and perspectives of the exhibit. This includes overhead from a distance, halfway between tower and eye level as you approach and at eye level in the exhibit. Remember, your company identity needs to be easily seen from many perspectives to increase exposure to the name and enhance brand awareness.
d. Are there sufficient graphics/are they well placed/legible? With the billboard analogy in mind, your exhibit needs to communicate a clear message and visually promise to deliver information the attendee is interested in hearing. It has to pique the curiosity of prospects so they are inclined to stop and learn more. Effective booth communications are critical to your ability to encourage the audience to stop and shop at your booth. Great graphics are part and parcel to attracting the right audience. This includes high level product/solution identification and corporate capabilities as well as how you relate to the audience at a particular show. And remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. It isn’t necessary to kill the audience with copy. Great pictures either representative of your solution or displaying the results of product application such as fertile farm fields with crops to represent a fertilizer can be very compelling if supported with the right headline and support bullet points.
Preparing effective graphics takes a lot of planning but it is worth it in the results it produces including attracting more target prospects to the exhibit. Remember attendees stop at booths that are selling something they want to buy even if they didn’t know it until they saw your graphics and read the message. Remember to place higher level information with less detail toward the outside of the booth and at higher levels and detailed information and supporting graphics inside the booth at eye level to support product/services and presentations.
What not to do? This includes wordy posters with too much extraneous copy and tiny type, copy printed well below sight lines, indifferent visuals and poorly produced graphics. There is no substitute for well-planned, effectively designed and professionally produced graphics and no short cuts to graphic success.
e. Do the graphics communicate clear, concise, specific message(s)? Attendees are moving fast during show hours sometimes paying scant attention to the exhibits. To capture attention you have to cut through the sensory overload with compelling messages that appeal to prospects and indicate you can solve their problems. They scan a booth fast and move on if it doesn’t communicate something they need to know. To address this you need both images and text that clearly communicates focused messages that also relate to the audience. The demand for time and attention of prospects is intense so consistency is critical. The best approach is to repeat, review and reinforce key messages consistently so prospects will remember you post show.
f. Do the message(s) inform/educate/give attendee a reason to stop? An effective exhibit tells a quick, written, verbal and visual story. Use short headlines and succinct product descriptions to give attendees a taste of what you can do for them. And remember, one of the primary reason attendees visit the exhibit hall is to see what’s new. So showcase new products, services and solutions and add starbursts with copy reading: “It’s NEW” or another similar phrase. This alone will bring more prospects to your door. .
g. Is the exhibit easy to enter? You want attendees to cross the carpet line and enter your space. Avoid obstacles that block or limit the entrance to your exhibit. Obstacles can include but are not limited to exhibit properties, tables, information counters and/or display cases that limit or prevent attendees from crossing the carpet line and entering. In an inline exhibit simply positioning a table or display case a few feet back from the carpet line even if it blocks the entry can make a difference. It encourages attendees to commit to your booth instead of lingering outside.
h. Is it easy to navigate? In a small, inline booth, navigation is usually not much of an issue. But in a larger peninsula or island booth, especially with multiple products, navigation requires more planning. Consider where products are placed and how to facilitate flow around the property to prolong the stay and make it easy for prospects to find what they need. Consider using a zone approach where there are natural “meet and greet” areas on the periphery of the booth or “one- or more” product demos near the outside of the property to attract visitors. In this configuration, the middle of the exhibit can be dedicated to seating area with one on one space for more detailed interactions.
If your exhibit is big enough, print a map of the booth with all the areas highlighted to make it easier for attendees to find what they need. Or add product locator signs around the booth with “You Are Here” arrows so attendees can orient themselves in the exhibit. If you want the best ideas, go the mall and look at the product locators and brochures with elevations of the floors with locations of all the stores. See how this helps you get around. These are ideas you can steal and apply to a larger exhibit in order to make it easy for attendees to navigate and find what they need in your booth.
i. Can visitors quickly discern what is being displayed and where? Use large, visible identification of product/solution areas and directional signage to help attendees find what they are looking for. When product kiosks are used, it helps to label these not with product names per say but well known solution or category names and position these a little above eye level where the copy is easy to see. This helps visitors find what they need as quickly as possible. Make it hard for them to locate relevant solutions and they will leave and go somewhere where it’s easier to find what the need. Think about the placement of the display/information areas next to each other and how these solutions support each other to tell a story and/or establish a relationship between products. This type of arrangement may help prospects discover something about your company they didn’t know before which can ultimately result in more business post show.
j. Is there enough open space for attendees? Exhibitors must provide sufficient room for attendees to enter and seamlessly navigate your exhibit. In addition, the booth has to have enough open space for prospects and staffers to interact comfortably in order to be productive. A booth that is overcrowded, hard to access with limited space can be also discourage attendees from visiting. It not only detracts from the appearance of the booth but also the visitor’s experience. It reduces the number of prospects you can accommodate and limits the amount of time they can spend with your staff. The solutions to overcrowding include a new open booth design, less clutter in the exhibit and/or more space.
k. Is the corporate identity effectively integrated in exhibit design? Make sure your corporate colors and images are consistently applied throughout the exhibit architecture, signage, kiosks, furnishings and even the color of the carpet. Display your corporate identity at tiered viewing levels so it can be seen from a distance, as you approach the booth and at eye level throughout the exhibit. Corporate colors provide continuity throughout the space as well as make the space feel larger with the use of same color and branding. Unifying your exhibit using consistent corporate colors repetitively throughout the space will also help you achieve enhanced brand awareness and improve visitor retention and recall of your brand.
We hope you found your evaluation and the information in each section helpful. The goal of this resource report is to give you additional information in conjunction with your individual report to guide you in making any necessary corrections in your exhibit program to improve your overall effectiveness. We realize you may have additional questions and sincerely welcome your questions. Please feel free to submit any and all questions to jefferson@tradeshowturnaround.com. If you have suggestions let us know and feel free to share your ideas on how to improve the reports.
Be sure to reserve your space for next year’s expo and contact us with questions: jefferson@tradeshowturnaround.com or call Jefferson Davis at 704-814-7355 to move.
